In Douglas Adams’s wickedly funny trilogy The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a machine known as ‘Deep Thought’ has finally come up with the Answer to the Great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. “You’re really not going to like it,” Deep Thought tells the mice who eagerly await the answer. “Tell us!” they shout. Deep Thought hesitates, pauses dramatically, then pronounces: “The Answer…is…42.”

Of course, that answer makes no sense to the mice. Forty-two seems plucked out of thin air, a number with no relation to anything. With absurd, wry humour, Adams skewers our conflicting tendencies to ask enormous questions yet strive for simple, tidy answers. And he laughs at the conundrum we face when the answer bears little relation to the questions asked, or makes no sense when it comes to evaluating “life, the universe and everything.”

“There should be some place where we can all go to get a relatively reliable and valid assessment of the world that we’re living in,” says Alex Michalos, director of the Institute for Social Research and Evaluation at the University of Northern British Columbia. Michalos is working with a national working group of about 20 researchers on the new Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIW).

The group includes representatives from Statistics Canada and Environment Canada, and researchers from eight universities and six non-government research organizations across Canada. The work is also part of a broader international effort to measure the things that count: the CIW researchers have been working closely with their counterparts in New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Germany, the United States and elsewhere.

An answer to everything?

The CIW won’t come up with the answer to everything, but its aim is still ambitious. And the questions it asks are every bit as important as the answers it offers. It aims to assess whether Canadians are better off or worse off than they used to be — not just materially or based on how fast the economy is growing, but in terms of their overall wellbeing. By doing so, it will become Canada’s core, central measure of progress, and it will relegate the Gross Domestic Product to the function for which it was originally designed and intended: measuring the overall size of the market economy.

“The Canadian Index of Wellbeing is intended to be a measure of the quality of life of all Canadians,” says Michalos. “You could think of an Index of Wellbeing as a kind of index of people’s life chances — that is the probabilities of good or bad things happening to them as they go through their lives.”

Measuring wellbeing in seven areas

Researchers working on the new Index are looking at seven specific areas or “domains” that affect the lives of everyone.

  • The Living Standards domain, for example, will measure incomes and jobs; the gap between rich and poor; food and livelihood security; and affordable housing.
  • The Healthy Populations domain will assess the health status and health outcomes of different groups of Canadians, as well as risk factors and conditions that affect health and disease.
  • The Community Vitality domain will assess social cohesion, personal security and safety, and people’s sense of social and cultural belonging. Other domains will measure:
  • The quality of the environment
  • The educational attainment of the population
  • The amount of free time that people can devote to social, family and cultural pursuits and finally,
  • The CIW will measure people’s civic engagement, and how responsive governing bodies are to citizens’ needs and views.

The CIW will release its first report in the fall, on three core areas of wellbeing that matter to Canadians: healthy populations, living standards and time use.

“If you look at what people have said about what makes a ‘good life’ going back to at least the 5th century BC, they will say things like: ‘Well, if you have health, if you have somebody who loves you, if you have financial security and you live in a friendly community and have decent housing, then you’re having a fairly good life,’” says Michalos. “So the Canadian Index of Wellbeing is about that kind of common sense.”

According to Dr. Robert McMurtry, a physician in London, Ontario, who serves on the Health Council of Canada, the new Index gathers leading-edge indicator research from around the country into an integrated and comprehensive measure of wellbeing for Canada. Such a measure could guide politicians and policy-makers in making more informed choices.

McMurtry, who worked with Roy Romanow at the Commission on the Future of Health Care, says the CIW project is the next logical step for those interested in improving Canadians’ health and wellbeing. He adds that the project grew out of a meeting to discuss the implications of the Romanow Report in December 2002. At that meeting, he met Charles Pascal, Executive Director of the Atkinson Charitable Foundation.

Romanow, Atkinson, and the Wellbeing Index: a “natural fit”

“It occurred to me that there is a natural link between the work that the Atkinson Foundation is doing promoting new measures of progress and Mr. Romanow’s work on health care,” McMurtry recalls. “I knew that Mr. Romanow would be interested in it. Having worked with him, I realized that he was very concerned about the health care system and what it meant to Canadians, but he also had concerns about the wellbeing of Canadians that went beyond that. I thought what a perfect, natural fit it would be.”

McMurtry became co-chair of a committee working to further the development of the Canadian Index of Wellbeing. For its part, the Atkinson Foundation has committed over $1.5 million to date toward the initiative. Other key funders plan to become partners in what organizers describe as the “nation-building work” of the CIW.

“The Canadian Index of Wellbeing is about the reality and complexity of life. When it’s mature, I can see it taking on an enormous importance to Canadians,” McMurtry says. “It would become part of the discourse of day-to-day life, if you will — the discussion around the water cooler.”

CIW will hold governments accountable

McMurtry adds that the CIW would give people the information they need to question politicians about the choices they make. He cites access to education as an example. It’s well known that the better education people get, the better off they are. The Index of Wellbeing would therefore rise as the quality and level of education increase. But it would decline if, for example, access to post-secondary education were threatened by any number of factors, including higher levels of student debt.

“Is it really a good idea for the long-term future of our country to under-emphasize education and choose tax cuts ahead of educating our young?” McMurtry asks. He says a rising or falling Index of Wellbeing would give voters the specific information they need to hold politicians accountable. It would also be simple to track: one coherent, integrated framework that would become the new, core measure of Canada’s progress.

McMurtry notes that the CIW will also report on which parts of the country are doing better or worse — not just in material terms, but in overall quality of life. Toronto might have higher average incomes than Charlottetown, for example — but it might also have higher levels of poverty and crime, and dirtier air.

Alex Michalos says it’s vital that Canadians themselves have a say in how the new Index is set up. “The Index is only going to work if Canadians hear their own voices in the product that we produce,” he says. “When you’re talking about a measure that claims to be a measure of the good life, you really have to ask people what they think the good life is like.”

Stats you can take to the bank — for all political stripes

Michalos is part of a working group that is planning public consultations as the Index is developed, to ensure that the new measures properly reflect the values of Canadians in an inclusive way. The consultations will make particular efforts to reach out to marginalized communities like Canada’s First Nations, who may not have a voice in their own health and wellbeing.

In addition, Michalos says it’s important that the Index produce information people can trust. “Our stance has to be like Statistics Canada in the sense that they produce reliable and valid numbers, and it doesn’t matter what political stripe you are or what axe you want to grind, there should be some place where we can all go to get a relatively reliable and valid assessment of the world that we’re living in.” It also helps that key Statistics Canada experts are involved in the project, he says.

Everyone involved with the CIW agrees that compiling the new Index is a monumental long-term initiative. It aims to transform how we measure progress and — using its suite of social, economic and environmental indicators — determine the wellbeing of Canadians.

“I could see it being something that would excite people,” he says. “It would make an impact on their lives because they are more educated, they have more insight as a result of the information the CIW provides. The final point I’d make about it is, when people are better informed, that imparts a sense of control as opposed to helplessness and then hope is not far behind. One of the most important things you can do for people is to ensure hope.”

In the fall of 2005, the Canadian Index of Wellbeing will be officially launched.